Vera, series six, episode one, review: 'rescued by Blethyn'

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The discovery of a dead body on a bleak Northumberland moor gave Vera(ITV) a fairly conventional murder-mystery start. And fairly conventional is how it continued for the most part, the series returning for a sixth run with a tale of a grandmother whose eye for younger men made her an object of suspicion in the local community, while her killer lurked closer to home.

As ever this was a two-hour session that depended almost entirely on Brenda Blethyn’s charismatic presence as cranky, shambling-on-the-surface DI Vera Stanhope. Fortunately she was up to the job, more than making up for a plot that itself shambled slowly through the domestic life of the victim and her extended family with little of the urgency or pervading sense of menace that marks out the BBC’s Shetland, another series based on characters created by crime writer Ann Cleeves, as one of the most gripping dramas on air just now.

On the case: Vera

Blethyn brought much-needed grit and heart to an ending that was indeed shocking – though principally for the fact that series character DC Bethany Whelan (Cush Jumbo) was shot in the back and killed for no apparent good reason other than to give the dénouement a bit of extra punch.

Kingsley Ben-Adir as Dr Marcus Summer and Brenda Blethyn as Vera.

Normally, that’s the sort of heartless plot device that flags up a series as tired, or running out of ideas. But it was rescued here by Stanhope’s response, a knife-edge balance of outward cold anger and inner devastation. Who knows, it may yet be the emotional thread that pulls her, and us, through the rest of the series.